Spreading meaningless love in an age without a world.
1
Taekwondo Park1 opens like this: these days, the Korean Wave rules the world. Korean dramas, Korean singers, Korean IT … even martial arts. And there is one (Korean) man in particular. He …
“As strong as Yajū Senpai (taking a little liberty with the translation), better-looking than Bae Yong-joon.”2 That’s how our man introduces himself.
Chapter 1: The Strongest Man in the Republic of Korea Lands in Japan!
He starts by challenging a dojo—and not just any dojo, but the one run by the strongest man alive, Haō (Japanese). After winning that challenge without breaking a sweat, Park Seong-il is happily eating kimchi at a little Korean streetside eatery when some Korea-hating Japanese men attack him. They smash up the shop. Enraged, Park takes his opponent down with one of his finishing moves, “Jung-geun” (Ahn Jung-geun, who successfully assassinated Itō Hirobumi). His heroic display catches the eye of a mysterious figure, earning him a place in the Haō Kaikan martial-arts tournament.
Chapter 2 begins by introducing taekwondo, with its five-thousand-year history, as the origin of Chinese martial arts and karate. Then Park meets some Zainichi Koreans—Koreans living in Japan—in a Korean neighborhood. An elder is astonished that Park would leave Korea, the world’s number-one country, to come to Japan. Park says there is someone he has to see (possibly Haō, possibly his brother, more likely both). As they talk, Japanese men attack them, calling it “Zainichi hunting” (在日狩り), abusing Korean girls and beating Korean men with clubs. The elder says they have always endured it. Park flies into a rage and knocks the Japanese bastards down with his finishing move “Bong-chang” (Lee Bong-chang, who attempted to assassinate Emperor Shōwa). He succeeds in making the Zainichi Koreans realize that “they too belong to the finest people in the world.”
Chapter 3, “Father’s Enemy,” recounts the tragic defeat of Park’s father at Haō’s hands. Haō (Japanese) is the strongest man in the world, known as a “living god.” He has never lost a fight and has ambitions to rule the world through sheer fighting power; countless dojos have been destroyed by him. Park’s father, once the strongest man in Korea, was also challenged by Haō. He knew he was no match for him, but he also knew the secret of taekwondo’s ultimate technique—North–South Unification. A mural depicting “North–South Unification” was sealed away by Japanese imperialism, and the mystery of this technique remains unsolved. Park’s father knew only a tiny part of “North–South Unification” and struck Haō with it, only to be defeated by Haō’s “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Fist.”3 Apparently unharmed, Haō walked out of the dojo—and suddenly began to stagger. So “North–South Unification” had hit home after all; he had just been toughing it out. Worthy indeed of taekwondo’s ultimate technique: a mere glimpse of its power, and already so terrifying!
Chapter 4: “The Man from the North—My Fist Is the General’s Fist!” Well, just as the title says, Park Seong-il’s older brother, Park Yeong-il, makes his entrance. Facing the head of the Greater Japan Divine Land Kendo Federation, who wields “Three Alls Slash” and “Hundred-Man Slash,”4 he easily defeats him with the secret technique “Juche” (Kim OO’s thought).
Chapter 6 begins with a flashback to Park Yeong-il’s past. While training in an ancient Korean tomb to master the secret technique, he encountered “a man far, far stronger than himself.” That man was none other than Kim OO, who agreed to let Yeong-il train with him. Back at the tournament, Park Seong-il faces an aikido master who proclaims “turning enemies into friends” to be his ultimate technique. Park says that Koreans, the highest of peoples, and the Japanese, the lowest, really cannot be good friends.
Chapter 6: Korea versus China, a Korean ninja versus a Baji boxer. Liu Shuwen (a total heartthrob), born in Yan’an, Shaanxi Province, practices “Eighth Route–style Baji Boxing.” His opponent is a Korean ninja who has been spreading the word in America that “ninjas originated in Korea.” Both switch into taunt mode. Liu calls his opponent a culture-stealing Korean bastard; the Korean ninja, in turn, laments the ignorance of Chinese bastards (チャンケ).5 The result: Liu takes him out in an instant.
Chapter 7, “Tears of Okinawa,” pits an American serviceman, who spends his days in Okinawa beating up men and raping women at will, against an Okinawan girl named Yui. Yui is beaten so badly that she cannot fight back. Just as the serviceman tears her clothes apart and is about to rape her, Park Yeong-il knocks him down with the secret technique “Il-sung.” He comforts the Okinawan girl: Okinawa has been Korean territory since ancient times; you should submit to the Korean People’s Republic.6 The girl asks, “Then can I become a member of the finest people in the world too?” “Yes,” Yeong-il reassures her gently.
Chapter 8, “Humanity’s Greatest Treasure: The Culture of Great Korea,” reveals a staggering conspiracy: the big-shot politicians Abeno Shinji and Noda Yoshihiro are nothing but Haō’s puppets. Cut to the fight between Liu Shuwen and Park Seong-il. Liu’s popularity with the girls gets on Park’s nerves: did you come here just to pick up girls? Liu replies that he came to prove Chinese martial arts are the strongest in the world. With some sympathy, Park tells him: don’t you know Chinese martial arts originated in Korea? The Four Great Inventions, Confucianism—all of Chinese culture came from Korea! During the fight, Liu uses the secret technique of Eighth Route–style Baji Boxing, “Three Kneelings and Nine Kowtows” (literally beating Park to his knees). Liu says: the kings of Korea performed three kneelings and nine kowtows when receiving envoys from the Celestial Empire. Somehow Koreans have forgotten their sorry history as a nation of servants in a Chinese vassal state. Now face four thousand years of Chinese history—and die. “China has only four thousand years of history,” Park suddenly says, though he has already been beaten to within an inch of his life. “Our Republic of Korea has five thousand.” “Did you know China’s Yellow River civilization originated in Dangun’s Korea?” With that, Park knocks Liu to the ground using taekwondo’s secret technique “Confucius” (declaring Confucius Korean).
Let’s jump straight to the final chapter. On Haō’s orders, Prime Minister Abeno calls an emergency press conference. A nervous wreck, he announces: Japan declares that it possesses nuclear weapons, severs diplomatic relations with 193 countries around the wo…rld, and de…clares war on them. Overwhelmed by the strain, Prime Minister Abeno faints. Haō adds: if any country dares take military action against Japan, Japan will immediately use nuclear weapons. It turns out that Haō’s real plan is to go to other countries single-handedly and beat up their leaders. Once he has beaten all 193 of them, he can rule the world! At this critical moment, the Park brothers finally defeat Haō with the ultimate technique, “North–South Unification.” The great Korean people have saved the world!
2
What makes Taekwondo Park excellent—or at least better than your average right-wing manga—is, first of all, that it does not set up a childish, black-and-white opposition. In an ordinary right-wing manga such as Hinomaru Gaisen Otome,7 “we” (the right-wingers) are all good, and the other side (the lefties) are all evil. It is so outrageously childish that I can’t help wondering: are right-wingers really all little loli girls like Youyouzi? Or do they just have little girls’ brains? A little girl’s brains, but a middle-aged man in the flesh (a seriously greasy one)—does that count as gap moe too?8
In Taekwondo Park, no side is wholly innocent. Anti-Korean though it is, the manga certainly doesn’t spare the Japanese its mockery. The brutal scenes of Japanese people attacking “Zainichi” (Koreans) absolutely cannot be summed up as “comedy.” Chinese, Koreans, Japanese—they are all human. They all get angry when provoked; they all have prejudices. What is worth noting is that the manga’s creator depicts all this while largely avoiding historical revisionism or historical relativism.
The scenes of the creator himself delivering his (historical) commentary are also amusing: he always wears a cold expression, as though his mind has been contaminated. He says he is drawing this manga for “genuine Japanese–Korean friendship”: get a proper understanding of the depths of Japan’s wickedness and the great history of our Korean people, for the sake of genuine Japanese–Korean friendship.
Genuine Japanese–Korean friendship calls not for making both countries look good, but for laying bare everything discreditable about them. Japan really did invade, and really did many bad things to Koreans living in Japan. Korea really was invaded and was the victim, but it has also invented some history in recent times. In the ring, we can see the world of “carnival” that Bakhtin describes: all distinctions of status, high and low, noble and base, are erased. Historical events are compressed into a single manga panel. Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Fist VS the ultimate technique, North–South Unification.
Now we should look again at the creator’s expression—his cold expression. We should not take this as the coldness of someone above it all. In other words, it is not merely that his coldness allows him calmly to work historical facts into gag manga; making manga like this also produces a coldness like that of a contaminated mind. Gag manga is not just what he chooses to draw; it is also what he is left with. The material we encounter defeats any serious narrative (which cannot handle that traumatic historical reality). Only in the context of carnival can this truth be expressed in a distorted form.
We therefore cannot simply treat Korea’s invention of history as a matter of Korean “national character”: an inherent disrespect for history. To some extent, it is not that they do not respect history, but that they respect it too much. History puts them under too much pressure. They cannot “mock themselves” as many other peoples can, passing over their tragic past with a laugh. Instead, they rewrite history excessively, and through this excessive rewriting, that past paradoxically becomes bound to them all the more closely. Seen simply from outside, this is funny; it seems like comedy. But there is no purely external viewpoint. Korea’s comedy is a whole pile of tragedies put together, and many people took part in those tragedies—especially the Japanese. You get situations like this:
- Japanese people drive Koreans crazy.
- Koreans act crazy.
- Japan uses Koreans’ craziness to claim that it never did anything that could have driven Koreans crazy, because Koreans were crazy to begin with: being crazy is a distinctive feature of the Korean national character.
- The bad things you Koreans say we Japanese did were actually good things, because Koreans are crazy, and naturally, when the Japanese came over, it was to correct Koreans’ craziness.
Here, victims suffer doubly, and perpetrators inflict double harm. To go further: victims know only that they have been harmed, not that they are also harming themselves; perpetrators think they are harming only others, unaware that they are harming themselves too.
Editor’s note: I think those wildly implausible anti-Japanese war dramas, with all their monstrous absurdities, also have something of this in them as comedy: that history is too tragic and crushing for us to face directly, too horrifying a tragedy … Of course, we should still have confidence that we can regain the courage to face it.